70% of #OWS Supporters are Politically Independent
Tag: solidarity
Oct 20 2011
Occupy Wall Street Thursday 10.20.11
Feb 22 2011
Feed The Wisconsin Demonstrators Pizza!!
I just ordered 2 pizzas to be delivered to demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin. Rachel Maddow has the story:
You’re probably already familiar with ordering take-out food online. Some restaurants let you do it directly and others use a middle man service, but the idea is that you log on, place your order, plug in your credit card info and tell it where to deliver the food. But there’s nothing that says you have to have the food delivered to yourself. In fact, there’s nothing that says you have to even be in the same country as the food you’ve just ordered.And so we arrive at Ian’s Pizza by the Slice where donations literally from around the world are coming into their State Street store in the form of online pizza orders to feed Wisconsin protesters. As Politico reports, “On Saturday alone, Ian’s gave away 1,057 free slices in their store and delivered more than 300 pizzas to the Capitol itself.”
You get it. I got it. I sent 2 20″ 3 topping pizzas to the assembled democracy demonstrators. Join me. It’s easy. You go to badgerbites.com and order a pie for the demonstrators. You know how to order for yourself. It’s just as easy to order for others. Go for it. It will make you smile.
And by the way. This does not mean that my allegiance to Pizza Bob’s in Ann Arbor has been violated in any regard. The way I see it, when in Madison, you do like the Badgers.
simulposted at The Dream Antilles
Dec 22 2010
A statement from a section of the French workers
What I have copied over the fold is a declaration issued recently by a self organized group of French workers, a statement of solidarity and strategy in the face of the global neoliberal push (putsch?) for “austerity”. They call for global resistance based on the following principles:
– We can take control of our own struggles and organise collectively.
– We can discuss together openly and fraternally, we can speak freely with each other.
– We can control of our own discussions and our own decisions.
Can the workers of the world unite?
Sep 27 2010
The Holder Raids: The Reaction Begins
I’ve been reading around the Left web for the past couple of hours, and it is heartening to see the quick solidarity toward the Freedom Road Socialist Organization comrades being subjected to police raids and the confiscation of vast quantities of their personal papers, records, mementos, and even money.
Left activists from across the spectrum are organizing a series of emergency protest rallies around the country over the next few days, using Facebook and other social media to spread the word. A list of those rallies and various related items on the flip.
Jan 18 2010
Wear Red for Haiti
As I have already said, I apologize if this is already common knowledge. Tomorrow an international fundraising and solidarity event will be staged. Everyone, everywhere can be involved. If we all step up together, and each of us makes a small contribution, we will make a difference!
Jun 25 2009
Solidarity can win – Spread the strikes
Original article, subtitled Lindsey dispute is a fight for us all. Oil bosses sack more than 600 workers for organising action. Thousands walk out of construction sites in support, via Socialist Worker (UK):
Thousands of construction workers have walked out of work and taken illegal unofficial strike action. The wildcat strikes follow the Total oil multinational’s sacking of over 600 workers at the Lindsey refinery site in Lincolnshire.
Jun 16 2009
Solidarity With The Iranian Struggle For Democracy
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| This is a brief essay about solidarity. In this case, it’s about solidarity with the people of Iran who are protesting what appears to be a stolen election, the loss of democracy.
How do we support those people, half the world away, in their struggle for democracy? How do we say just as people (and not a government) that we support their efforts to demand democracy? That they’re right, they deserve their democracy and we want them to have it? We can only do simple things. Things like changing our location and time zone on Twitter to Tehran and GMT +3.5 hours. Things like making our avatar green. Things like reading the posts of those who are there. Things like posting and distributing their videos on youtube. Things like writing blogs and asking others to link arms with them in solidarity. Things like talking about what ideas we might have that could be of help to them. These are things that might be completely ineffective to help Iranians achieve democracy, to get a new, fair election, to overturn the sham outcome of their last election. I realize that. But that’s not what’s important. That’s not what’s important now. What’s important, I think, is our solidarity with their struggle, our saying, however we can say it, “Brothers and Sisters, we’re with you. We want you to succeed. We want you to be safe, and free. We want you to obtain the change you seek.” Will they see it? Will they hear about it? Will they know that we are saying this about them? Of course they will. I say it by posting in green. You might have other ways of saying it. It’s important to me to say, aloud, to whomever can hear it, “I support the struggle in Iran for democracy.” Please join me. Please join me in giving to the Iranian people who are struggling for democracy the same support we’d like to receive in our struggles for democracy and equality and peace.
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Jun 14 2009
He is their Obama
crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
We were ROBBED in Bush v Gore 2000. The Supreme Court was the Supreme Council for one ruling. We were told to stop counting and declare George W. Bush President, and so it was.
Imagine if Obama v McCain was this election and the SCOTUS robbed us again, what would you have done?
It is like that in Iran everyday, and now more than ever.
After viewing the farce that is Democracy in Iran over the past few days I think it is very important that Americans who believe in an open Democracy fully support Iranians who want the same for themselves.
Therefore, I invite you to offer your full support for the Iranians who voted for candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the hopes of the next generation of Iranian “Change”!
This is what winning hearts and minds is all about.
People around the world who want a more Democratic society should be fully supported by Americans no matter where they are from or what their faith is. This is even more true in cases where elections are rigged and the will of the people are suppressed by the powers of a status quo that lacks empathy for the people they wish to control.
Jan 25 2009
Eight Points on Gaza
Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain
1. Who won? In an immediate military sense, Israel. What do you expect? The Israeli Defense Forces made 2,500 plus F-16 and ‘copter air sorties against a densely populated urban area where the only opposing armed forces possessed no anti-aircraft guns, no surface to air missiles and no planes. It is estimated that repairing the damage suffered by the already desperate inhabitants of this colossal open air prison, the ones who survived, will run over $2 billion. 80% of the agricultural infrastructure of Gaza is reported to have been been destroyed.
Beyond the horrific destruction visited to the Palestinian people, though, the Israelis appear to have picked up a stone only to drop it on their own feet. They will have an uphill slog in the battle for summation, with direct political consequences in increased isolation as sympathy and even material support from people around the world flow to Gaza.
2. Despite careful timing–to take advantage of reduced attention to news during the Christian holiday season and to finish before administration change in the US–Israeli aggression caught world attention. Some analysts have pointed out that Israel dominated the “war of words,” banning foreign journalists from Gaza and working to see that discourse was laced with terms like terrorism, Islamic fundamentalists, security and the like. However, it decisively lost “the war of images” as photos and video provided by the Palestinian news agency Ramattan appeared on al-Jazeera and other news outlets, even CNN. This showed the people of the world the carnage, and the agony of those still living, and it documented IDF attacks on homes, schools, hospitals, mosques and UN facilities.
3. At the level of international government, Israel pretty much got a free ride at first, due in part to splits among Palestinians and between Arab states, and in part to US intransigence in blocking meaningful action in the UN Security Council. But while governments started out largely sitting on their hands, an unprecedented outpouring of mass anger and protest in country after country forced institutions like the news media and the international Red Cross and then governments to speak up in criticism of Israel. (Still, only Venezuela and Bolivia broke ties with Israel over the attack).
Three choice examples of the popular struggle, from Europe alone:
Norway, where over 85 pro-Palestinian protests and broader peace marches took place in 59 towns (in a country of 4.5 million!), saw the most intense rioting in recent memory in central Oslo as police tried to repress militant young protestors. (See the nifty interactive map–in English–from Frontlinjer magazine here.)
In the United Kingdom, even after the truce/ceasefire, students at sixteen (16, count ’em, 16) universities seized campus buildings around a series of anti-Israel and pro-Palestine demands. Most are still on. Students at the London School of Economics and Oxford report victories in negotiations with administrators.
In Greece, a January 9 news story from Reuters sent Greek activists and bloggers into research mode. They were able to identify a contracted shipment of GBU-39 bunker buster bombs scheduled to go from Sunny Point, NC through the port of Astakos en route to Israel. They started organizing for an embargo of US and Israeli shipping including outreach to dockworkers. By the 16th, one week later, the contract was cancelled!
4. In the United States, the astonishing power of the Israel lobby once again gave it unchallenged sway in the media and government. The Senate passed by unanimous voice vote and the House with a total of 5 courageous Nays (Dennis Kucinich, Gwen Moore, Maxine Waters, Nick Rahall and Ron Paul) a resolution hailing the aggression and blaming Hamas for all the Palestinian deaths. Candidate Obama last July signaled his stance, saying, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” (No one in the media asked him about whether he had stolen his house at gunpoint and was keeping the former residents and their children in a concentration camp in his back yard.)
Considering the propaganda barrage and the “conventional wisdom” in the very air we breathe here, the fact that Americans generally (according to a Rasmussen poll) “are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip” (44-41%, with 15% undecided) and that non-Republicans oppose it solidly is a remarkable development.